Here I am. The hotel business room at a Holiday Inn Express, waiting until sleep finds its way back, or I crash in half-sleep comatose for the night. Two hours to Gatlinburg tomorrow and then three more to home. So, let’s go through the trip so far:
1. Cape San Blas, FL—the usual family hang out with Gramps and Granny at the beach house. three days.
2. Cocoa Beach, FL—waiting on the boat/getting on the ship. two days.
3. International waters—Heading to Free Port. Twelve to fifteen hours.
4. Free Port, Bahamas—one day
5. Nassau, Bahamas—one day (Atlantis water park)
6. International waters—total loss in the casino: $28.67. one day.
7. Cocoa Beach, FL—prolonging the inevitable? One day.
8. 2004 Toyota 4-Runner—seven hours or so. Who knows.
9. Spartanburg, SC—here we are and here we keep breathing.
Do people say “we” to give themselves a sense of comfort? Well, I guess then I should say, do “we” say “we” to comfort “ourselves”? Makes you feel like you’re not the only one who hasn’t slept in three days, who hasn’t had a decent, full, complete night’s sleep. Tired is not the question. I’m tired enough to put Rip Van himself to shame. It’s a question of surrender. My boyfriend once told me that in order to have the most fulfilling night’s sleep; one should simply surrender to the pull of fatigue. It shouldn’t be a forced act. Maybe that’s where I sit. Seven to twelve hours in a car isn’t exactly my idea of a good time, so I try to sleep. And here I am. I’ve been to two hotels since leaving the ship and I still have not slept.
I miss my bed.
I miss routine. I miss Mark. Hell, I miss work. And it’s not that I haven’t enjoyed myself—I’ve had a blast—I just…don’t want to be coasting anymore. I’m sick of summer.
I never could quite understand why it was that I hated disliked summer so much. It’s too hot, or It’s too humid, or There’s no rain, just didn’t seem to cut it. It wasn’t the meteorological aspects of summer I hated so much, it was just the emptiness of it. I wasn’t working for a goal, wasn’t trying to reach a certain rite of passage. It was just…summer. During my regulated, ask-to-pee, days in the public school system, I understood that the purpose of every day was to work to the end of the year and go on to the next one. But what’s this middle? This time period where everyone seems to seem doubly alive and doubly…pathless.
Autumn is a time of preparation. It’s time to stock up and take inventory for what is to come. It is productive. In winter, everything is dormant. Waiting, stilling in the suspense for what comes next, still preparing for the next stage of life. The ashes of the phoenix, if you will. And spring is all about rebirth. It’s new life. It’s green; it’s a display of strength and endurance over the course of the cold months. But then you have summer. Summer. Relaxing, overbearing summer. Is there not a productive steam to the hot sixty? Is there not another sight but the flailing of springtime’s joy, shaking it and choking it out until it’s been bled dry? This is why I don’t sleep. I think too much. It is also why I’ll live somewhere where the seasons are blurred around the edges and you end up with two and a half instead of four.
10:43. I’m still awake. Typical, I won’t say that’s not normal for me. Eleven, twelve, I’m usually up. We’ll see if the clock ticks past two for me again tonight, though. Mark said he would call at eleven. So a good seventeen minutes until he interrupts my brooding. Good. I need someone to. I need someone to shake me. To rock me to sleep. I feel like a jumble of angles and soft muscles and crease marks from the sheets. I don’t feel human like this.
We keep the temperature at home at about the 75 degree mark. I’d lower it ten if I could but my mom has hyperthyroid disease and she’s cold all the time. I have two fans in my bedroom, though and most nights in the summer I keep the window open and let in some good old Kentucky air. Well, it would be if I didn’t live in a lower middle-class suburban neighborhood on the very edge of I-75. I can’t remember a time when I couldn’t hear the interstate from my backyard. Daddy works third shift at the Toyota plant so he needs to live in a place where he can leave as late as possible. That way, him and mom can have as much of the day as possible together. 4pm to 4am, he’s at work. So, you can imagine I don’t see him much either. It’s alright though. My dad and I are of the stand-offish type so neither of us need that much attention.
Maybe. I don’t feel like I need that much attention. Of course, I’m a writer, so what the hell do I know? My life is within the bindings of moleskin notebooks and simulated computer paper on hotel Aspire processers.
Nine minutes.
Jesus, I spend half my time checking my phone to see how long until he calls. If I don’t marry him, the next guy better be pretty impressive. I don’t imagine there will be, though. He says I make him feel worse by telling him I haven’t slept or that I have headaches late in the day. I showed him where they were, just above my ear, curving around the back of my head like those microphones they use in stage shows. Throbbing, like I could scratch out the skin, but most of the time I don’t notice they’re there. The day I pulled my knee out of the socket twice I still remember his face. Agony. Sheer agony. I knew that he loved me the moment he saw me on the ground. It was two o’clock in the morning and we were playing volleyball after prom. And I was on the floor. I dove for a ball and loosened the joint and then served, stepped down off the swing and out came my knee.
I remember he half carried me to the car. Lugged me into the backseat. I still think he’s crazy. Maybe he is for loving someone like me. Who knows. If he can love someone who’s such a calamity, he must have some sort of complex. I love him, I really do…but where do I fall in? I’m not that pretty. I’m not skinny. I’m polite, only because I’m freakishly shy. I have outbursts of spontaneous ingratitude and life-threatening, thrill-seeking behavior. I curse. I’m only lady-like when I want to sweet talk him into something. Where’s the appeal? And I’m a hypochondriac with psycho-symptomatic insomnia. Wow. I’m a keeper.
But, I guess, you know. I believe in God and Jesus and I believe in loving people and I am trying. I’m an artist. Sometimes I tell myself it’s my words he’s really in love with. It’s poetry, not the poet. If I stopped writing…would he stop loving me?
11:00 and I’m wondering if the phone will ring if I look at it. I should check if it has signal. But if I do, I’m really checking if he’s called. God, I’m obsessive. He texts to say he’ll call soon. He’s working on a survey for the University of Kentucky.
